Easy to navigate maps? Character driven narrative? Am I missing something here, did we even play the same game?
The maps were confusing and designed in such a way as to trick you into going one way following the minimap only to make that a dead end, and multiple times you had to travel a long way around, then there are several things you want to do at the top but are forced to jump one way, and it's a one way jump, and now you have the joy of running all the way around again to get back there! This happens multiple times throughout the game, not just once or twice.
The second and third maps in particular were extremely bad. Good thing the fourth map was relatively more straightforward, but the infuriating map design was far from "Straight forward" as you claim.
And character driven? LOL. I guess if Gustave is your extremely low watermark for what makes a nuanced, well-written character then I have nothing further to argue. The game has a great plot and setting as you'd expect from a Megaten game, but is extremely hobbled by pacing issues exacerbated by the need to run around the poorly-designed maps over and over and over.
The game can't decide if it's an open-world-lite RPG, a platformer, or an exercise in frustration. Game would have greatly benefitted from having some actual straightforward dungeon designs like in past Megaten games like Nocturne or Digital Devil Saga. That way you'd get to the story bits more often and you'd spend more time on characters and developing them, rather than the extremely shallow one-note characters we got in this game, both from the demon NPCs who regressed to pathetic FedEx quests you'd expect from a cheap Western RPG than a well-woven JRPG story.
Even the main actor characters didn't get anywhere near enough attention to make them memorable. Tao, Miyazu, the honor student and Dazai were all very shallow characters and not memorable. No, removing your cap and wiping the dumb look on your face pretending you're a hardass doesn't make you memorable.
I expect more from a Megaten game. Nocturne was a little light on this as well, I guess this game was trying to be more like Nocturne? But at least Nocturne wasn't bogged down by the terrible map design.
And while I appreciate a lot of the improvements to combat and the awesome QOL improvements to demon fusion, you didn't touch on the biggest design problem of this game: level-based combat. I mean, I utterly hate it. Why did they feel a need to do this? Because it was "open world" and "semi-linear" as you put it, so they didn't want the combat to get "too easy" for people who know the demon fusion system well and know how to get the most mileage out of it?
Everything in combat is governed by level. If you're high level, you get huge attack bonuses to your target. If you're low level, you take huge damage penalties. It's stupid! What is the point of creating a build for a demon or the Nahobino if it's all negated by an opposing demon being 12 levels higher? The only real path to power in this game is to grind levels, and that makes for a huge regression in my opinion, and an absolutely stupid game design choice.
Performance issues were annoying but not a big deal in an RPG like this... at least when it's not being a platformer.
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Re: Review: Shin Megami Tensei V - The Best Entry Yet In This Dark, Engrossing RPG Series
Easy to navigate maps? Character driven narrative? Am I missing something here, did we even play the same game?
The maps were confusing and designed in such a way as to trick you into going one way following the minimap only to make that a dead end, and multiple times you had to travel a long way around, then there are several things you want to do at the top but are forced to jump one way, and it's a one way jump, and now you have the joy of running all the way around again to get back there! This happens multiple times throughout the game, not just once or twice.
The second and third maps in particular were extremely bad. Good thing the fourth map was relatively more straightforward, but the infuriating map design was far from "Straight forward" as you claim.
And character driven? LOL. I guess if Gustave is your extremely low watermark for what makes a nuanced, well-written character then I have nothing further to argue. The game has a great plot and setting as you'd expect from a Megaten game, but is extremely hobbled by pacing issues exacerbated by the need to run around the poorly-designed maps over and over and over.
The game can't decide if it's an open-world-lite RPG, a platformer, or an exercise in frustration. Game would have greatly benefitted from having some actual straightforward dungeon designs like in past Megaten games like Nocturne or Digital Devil Saga. That way you'd get to the story bits more often and you'd spend more time on characters and developing them, rather than the extremely shallow one-note characters we got in this game, both from the demon NPCs who regressed to pathetic FedEx quests you'd expect from a cheap Western RPG than a well-woven JRPG story.
Even the main actor characters didn't get anywhere near enough attention to make them memorable. Tao, Miyazu, the honor student and Dazai were all very shallow characters and not memorable. No, removing your cap and wiping the dumb look on your face pretending you're a hardass doesn't make you memorable.
I expect more from a Megaten game. Nocturne was a little light on this as well, I guess this game was trying to be more like Nocturne? But at least Nocturne wasn't bogged down by the terrible map design.
And while I appreciate a lot of the improvements to combat and the awesome QOL improvements to demon fusion, you didn't touch on the biggest design problem of this game: level-based combat. I mean, I utterly hate it. Why did they feel a need to do this? Because it was "open world" and "semi-linear" as you put it, so they didn't want the combat to get "too easy" for people who know the demon fusion system well and know how to get the most mileage out of it?
Everything in combat is governed by level. If you're high level, you get huge attack bonuses to your target. If you're low level, you take huge damage penalties. It's stupid! What is the point of creating a build for a demon or the Nahobino if it's all negated by an opposing demon being 12 levels higher? The only real path to power in this game is to grind levels, and that makes for a huge regression in my opinion, and an absolutely stupid game design choice.
Performance issues were annoying but not a big deal in an RPG like this... at least when it's not being a platformer.